Cameras Trivia
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148 free Cameras trivia questions with answers — technology quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This cameras trivia quiz follows the machine itself from the dark chamber described by Ibn al-Haytham and named by Kepler, through Niépce's first permanent photograph and the silver-plated daguerreotype, to the box that George Eastman named with an Anagrams set and the $1 Brownie that invented the snapshot. It covers the great designs of the 20th century: Barnack's 35 mm Leica, the Rolleiflex, the pentaprism SLR, the Nikon F in Vietnam, Hasselblads on the Moon, the Argus 'Brick', the Instamatic cartridge and Edwin Land's instant Polaroid. The second half is the digital era: the CCD that won a Nobel Prize, the 8-pound Kodak prototype that took 23 seconds per picture, Sony's floppy-disk Mavica, the first camera phones in Japan, mirrorless cameras, GoPro's surf-trip origins and Kodak's bankruptcy. Around a third of the questions are easy; the rest are for camera-club members and gear obsessives. Our photography quiz covers the photographers and their pictures. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the history of the camera and the companies and models named, and each explanation adds one more detail.
30 of 148 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In a lens aperture setting such as f/2.8, what does the letter f stand for?
Focal length
Focal length is the f: the number is the focal length divided by the width of the opening, which is why a smaller f-number means a wider aperture and more light.
Q 02Which 11th-century scholar analysed the camera obscura in his Book of Optics?
Ibn al-Haytham
Ibn al-Haytham wrote his Kitab al-Manazir (Book of Optics) in Cairo between 1011 and 1021, using pinhole images to show by experiment that light travels in straight lines.
Q 03Which astronomer's 1604 book contains the earliest known use of the term 'camera obscura'?
Johannes Kepler
Johannes Kepler used the term in his 1604 treatise Ad Vitellionem Paralipomena, and went on to argue that the eye works the same way, throwing an upside-down image onto the retina.
Q 04Who made the oldest surviving photograph taken with a camera?
Nicéphore Niépce
Nicéphore Niépce left a bitumen-coated pewter plate in a camera at his window at Le Gras for hours, perhaps days, in about 1827; the picture then dropped out of sight until historians traced it in 1952.
Q 05A daguerreotype image was made on a polished sheet of what?
Silver-plated copper
A daguerreotype was made on a silver-plated copper sheet, polished to a mirror and sensitised with iodine fumes; the latent image was then developed over mercury vapour.
Q 06What did the French government do with the daguerreotype process on 19 August 1839?
Gave it 'free to the world'
On 19 August 1839 France, which had bought the daguerreotype rights in exchange for state pensions, gave it 'free to the world'; Daguerre separately patented it in England.
Q 07Where did George Eastman get the name Kodak?
He made the word up
He made the word up: Eastman said he tried out combinations of letters starting and ending with K, a favourite he called 'a strong, incisive sort of letter'.
Q 08Kodak's Brownie box camera of 1900 was named after characters created by which writer?
Palmer Cox
Palmer Cox's Brownies were mischievous sprites from his popular children's books, a fitting name for a camera aimed at children; more than 150,000 were shipped in its first year.
Q 09What was the launch price of the original Kodak Brownie in the United States?
$1
The Brownie sold for $1, with a six-exposure roll of film for 15 cents, a cardboard box camera that put snapshots within reach of children.
Q 10Kodak's Instamatic cameras, launched in 1963, made loading easy by using what?
Film cartridges
Film cartridges dropped straight in, with nothing to thread: fiddly roll-film loading had kept many people from buying a camera at all, and more than 50 million Instamatics were made by 1970.
Q 11Oskar Barnack built the Ur-Leica prototype around which format, borrowed from the movies?
35 mm cine stock
Oskar Barnack's 1914 Ur-Leica ran 35 mm cine stock horizontally, doubling the movie frame to 24×36 mm; the production Leica I went on sale in 1925.
Q 12The name Leica is a blend of which two words?
Leitz and camera
Leitz and camera made Leica: the Wetzlar firm built only microscopes at first, until Ernst Leitz II decided in 1924 to risk producing the small camera his employee Oskar Barnack had designed.
Q 13How much did a Leica 0-Series camera fetch, including premium, at a June 2025 auction?
About €7.2 million
Q 21The name Canon derives from what?
The bodhisattva Kannon
Canon comes from the bodhisattva Kannon, the Buddhist deity of mercy: the company's 1934 prototype was named the Kwanon, and the Canon trademark was registered the following year.
Q 22Which 1976 Canon was the first SLR to be run by a built-in microcomputer?
The AE-1
The AE-1's microcomputer let Canon cut about 300 parts and automate assembly, so the price fell and it became the first SLR bought by millions of amateurs.
Q 23The Argus C3, sold in the United States from 1939 to 1966, was nicknamed what?
The Brick
The boxy, heavy Argus C3 was nicknamed 'the Brick'; over 2 million were made in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and Colin Creevey carries one in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.
About €7.2 million bought one of the few surviving 1923 prototypes of the first Leica, sold in Wetzlar as the company marked that camera's centenary.
Q 14Which 1954 Leica introduced a bayonet lens mount and a combined viewfinder and focusing window?
The M3
The M3 came first despite its number: the M2 followed in 1957, and the M3 stayed the best-seller of the line, with over 220,000 made by 1967.
Q 15Which German twin-lens reflex, launched in 1929, became the template for later TLRs?
Franke & Heidecke's Rolleiflex
Franke & Heidecke's Rolleiflex took three years to develop and was so widely imitated that most later TLRs owe their layout to it; its ground-glass finder shows the scene flipped left to right.
Q 16Which optical component lets an SLR show an upright, laterally correct image in its eye-level viewfinder?
A roof pentaprism
A roof pentaprism turns the picture the right way round: an SLR's mirror alone leaves it flipped left to right, which is all the older waist-level finders could show.
Q 17Which camera, unveiled at Leipzig in 1936, is widely credited as the first 35 mm SLR in regular production?
The Kine Exakta
The Kine Exakta, from Ihagee of Dresden, has one rival for the title: the Soviet Sport, designed in 1934-35, whose own launch date is uncertain.
Q 18The Nikon F of 1959 was widely adopted by photojournalists covering which war?
Vietnam
Vietnam made the rugged Nikon F the standard press camera, and one famously stopped a bullet aimed at the British war photographer Don McCullin.
Q 19Hasselblad cameras are most famous for taking the pictures of which event?
The Apollo Moon landings
The Apollo Moon landings were shot on Hasselblads because astronaut Wally Schirra, who owned a 500C, persuaded NASA to fly one on his 1962 Mercury mission.
Q 20In which country is Hasselblad based?
Sweden
Hasselblad is based in Gothenburg, Sweden; Victor Hasselblad's company grew from a German aerial camera recovered by the Swedish military in World War II, and the drone maker DJI later took a controlling stake.
Q 24The Latin phrase camera obscura, the origin of the word camera, means what?
Dark chamber
Dark chamber is the literal meaning: the first ones were darkened rooms with a small hole in one wall, and the boxes that shrank the idea kept the first word of the name.
Q 25What prompted Edwin Land to invent the instant camera in the 1940s?
His daughter's impatient question
His daughter's impatient question came on holiday in Santa Fe: three-year-old Jennifer asked why she couldn't see her picture at once, and Land had the idea worked out within the hour.
Q 26How quickly did Polaroid's first instant cameras sell out in 1948?
In a day
In a day: Polaroid demonstrated the camera at Boston's Jordan Marsh store on 26 November 1948, the day after Thanksgiving, and shoppers bought every one of the few dozen it had brought.
Q 27What did Edwin Land's company first sell, before cameras?
Polarised sunglasses
Polarised sunglasses came first: 'Polaroid' was the trademark of Edwin Land's glare-cutting plastic sheet, and the company founded on it in 1937 sold no camera until 1948.
Q 28Which 1972 Polaroid was the first to eject the print automatically, with no tab to pull?
The SX-70
The SX-70 made its debut when Edwin Land pulled one, folded flat, from his suit pocket at Polaroid's 1972 annual meeting and shot five pictures in ten seconds.
Q 29How much was Kodak ordered to pay Polaroid in 1990 for infringing its instant-camera patents?
About $900 million
About $900 million: the award was far below the $12 billion Polaroid had sought, and the courts had already forced Kodak to stop making instant cameras in 1986.
Q 30Edwin Land, who went on to hold 535 patents, dropped out of which university after his first year?
Harvard
Harvard lost him after his freshman year and he never took a degree, yet colleagues and the press called him Dr. Land for the rest of his career.